


Thrown Out Speeches

by likehandlingroses



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Personal Growth, Redeemed Dudley Dursley, Soul-Searching, and has new friends!, who journals!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 20:36:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20453192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likehandlingroses/pseuds/likehandlingroses
Summary: Dudley's left his old friends behind, but that hasn't quelled the guilt and confusion inside of him. A conversation with a new friend introduces him to a hobby that just might help sort out the knots inside of him...if he can only find the right words.





	Thrown Out Speeches

“He’s wandering again,” Thomas said, picking at Olive’s bag of crisps. She poked his hand with her pen before returning to her journaling. “What do you reckon happened to him?”

“Someone probably hit him back,” Olive said, squinting in the sun as she looked up to see Dudley Dursley walking aimlessly, his hands shoved in the pockets of his bomber jacket. She sighed, looking back at her page of carefully outlined ramblings. 

As long as she could remember knowing Dursley, he’d been surrounded by a gaggle of goons--bullies of the worst kind. They’d left her and Thomas alone, though Olive suspected that was more a lack of opportunity than anything else. Some people were too odd to ever run in the same circles as the people who would punish them for it. 

“Oh my God,” Thomas said, shoving her shoulder. “He’s coming over here!”

Sure enough, Dursley was ambling over to their table, looking down at the ground. 

“What do you want, then?” Olive spat out as he came to a stop, still about three meters out of reach. 

“Do you always sit here, away from everyone?” It was the longest sentence she’d heard him say that was free of any jeering, any threats. 

“What’s it to you?” she said, unconvinced by his unnaturally mild demeanor. 

“Just wondered,” he said with a shrug, looking back down at the leaves on the ground. 

“Did you?” Olive said, shutting her journal. “Did you just wonder? Because  _ I’m _ wondering why someone who hangs ‘round bullies and spends their time terrorizing this school is asking if we’re always alone over here.”

Dursley looked up at the trees, his eyes tracing a path from the brown, rotting leaves at his feet to the empty branches that hung above his head. 

“They aren’t my friends anymore,” he said, his voice quieter than ever. 

Olive snorted. “Good for you.”

She hoped that would be the end of it, but Thomas—who until now had looked too petrified to speak—asked: 

“Why not?”

Dursley looked shocked at the question, as if he’d never expected anyone to much care why he did anything. 

“It’s like you said,” he replied. “I don’t want to be that...that way.”

Thomas nodded, and Olive resigned herself to what she knew he was going to say next. 

“You want to sit down?”

He sat across from them with a delicate caution, taking a bag of crisps out of his pocket and adding them to the pile of snacks on the table. The gesture warmed Olive to him, just a bit. 

“You write in that a lot,” he said, pointing to Olive’s journal. “Is it for school?” 

Olive shook her head. “I journal.”

He frowned. “Journal what?”

“Thoughts. Ideas. Just to sort them.” 

He leaned forward then, with a speed that suggested it was the first movement of the afternoon that he hadn’t carefully planned. “How does it sort them?”

“I don’t know…” Olive said, still bemused that she was talking to Dudley Dursley about journaling. “It just does. It’s hard at first, but if you practice, it gets easier.”  
  
  


* * *

**July 3, 1996**

Harry--

I don’t know what happened, but you seem upset. I’m sorry if it’s because you have to be here instead of with your friends and your godfather. I feel like I should ask you about them, but I don’t know if you’d tell me anything. 

I think about how you saved me all the time. 

Do those Things make everyone feel like that? Or am I really that awful? I think it must be a little bit true.

I’m trying not to be awful, anymore. I made different friends. Nice ones. But sometimes I still wake up and it’s so cold and I can’t breathe. And I feel like I’m the worst person who ever lived and everyone knows it even though I didn’t. And I keep saying that it was an accident and I’m trying to be different, but no one cares and nothing’s ever okay again. 

Is that normal? 

I don’t hang around my old friends. They got mad about it. I almost got beat up a few times. But my new friends stuck around and I’m bigger than most anyone, so they didn’t get any hits in. 

I was thinking: most people are friends with their cousins, and they don’t even live together. Did you know that? I keep meaning to ask Mum and Dad why they didn’t want us to be friends. I just need to find the words. 

We could ask together. If you wanted.   
  
  


**January 15, 1997**

Mum--

If I was the same, only I was Harry and not your son, would you still love me? 

I don’t think you would, and I don’t understand how that works. Why would you take care of a baby you didn’t want to love? Why did you tell me that was normal? 

  
  
  


**March 10, 1997**

Dad--

I learned that it's okay to get angry sometimes. That's normal. The problem is, you can’t just BE angry. You have to learn how to be angry so it doesn’t hurt people. 

You didn’t teach me how to do that. Do you know how? Did your dad teach you? 

I’m going to learn, and I’m going to teach it to my kids. I think they’ll be glad I did. 

  
  


**June 15, 1997**

Mum and Dad-- 

I want to talk about Harry. And me. Our family. I don’t know where to start. You’re supposed to break things down into points when you write a speech, but I don’t know how to do that. There’s too much and I don’t know how to say it all. But I’ve been practicing, and one day I’ll be able to do it. 

I’m scared for that day because I think you’ll be angry. You might even hate me, after what I say. I don’t want you to. I don’t hate you. I don’t want to fight. 

I just want to know why we aren’t good people, and if that matters to you as much as it matters to me. It matters to me more than anything else. 

More than you. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This is loosely based on "The Archer" by Taylor Swift, a song I LOVE and thought worked so nicely with Dudley's arc.


End file.
